Tag

Eventually, Alice reaches Zedadias’ spare bed without collapsing. She gets a full night’s sleep, and wakes feeling well rested for the first time in her life.

She concedes to Zedadias that he probably ought to cook breakfast. She insists on cleaning up afterwards, though.

Which inevitably leads to a broken sink again.

She tries to act like nothing happened and starts reading through the romance novels on Zedadias’ bookshelf, but she’s still worrying about the mess she’s made.

Zedadias isn’t bothered about the broken sink. He just wants to play tag. This is Zedadias’ second favourite activity in the world, and if I leave the two of them alone together for any length of time, a game of it is soon proposed. It’s as if Zedadias is helping Alice make up for her lost childhood.

Alice still has her part-time job at the supermarket, and she’s feeling pretty good when she walks into town in the afternoon.

After work, she comes back to Zedadias’ house, but stops by the mailbox.

198 Responses to “Tag”

Wow, even though she is just a video game character, she has a heart. She puts other people behind herself. She looks like she’s having so much fun when she’s playing tag!!! She’s finally having fun now that Kev is gone!! She doesn’t have the green odor anymore that she used to have. She also got to sleep in a BED instead of the benches she usually sleeps on!! YAY FOR ALICE!!!

Looking at the way the game is programmed, rather than Alice as a fictional character, Sims with the “good” attribute will always, at some point, want to donate to charity, regardless of their financial state. Also, the money is managed by household — so if Alice doesn’t spend her money as she chooses, Kev may start buying stuff with her salary. I think that it will be good for her to start saving, but this may work best when she actually has a full-time job and is not part of a “household” with her father.

She’s a computer game character. If there’s one person who is to be chastised, it’s the person controlling her; he’s the one who gave her her the Clumsy, Unlucky, and possibly Loser traits that caused her to break nearly everything she touched; and he’s the one who granted her wish to donate to charity because it makes her happy.

Just as The Sims 3 TV spot says, you (the player) giveth. And you taketh away. You can choose to fulfill their wishes, or you can intervene and prevent them.

Sometimes a Sim’s wish isn’t in his/her best interest. Not to go back to the topic of religion, but The Sims is an interesting study in the idea of diety. Left alone, all Sims have free will. But through your guiding hand you can make their lives better or worse.

I’ve created a number of flawed characters too, and usually I end up trying to help them. I force loners to mingle, the lazy to do work, and the commitment-fearers to propose marriage, as uncomfortable as it makes them. And my evil character always wants to donate money to undermine causes — or to do other evil things. I often cancel such wishes.

I think that in part, Alice’s donations also have to do with mood. Alice hasn’t had much in her life to feel good about, and to be able to do donate to charity and do something good for others gives her a mood boost for 24 hours. I’m sure that now that she’s had a good night’s sleep, a full belly, some fun and positive socialization, that Alice is probably in the best mood she’s been in ever.

Totally!!! I mean, she’s a really nice person that she’s thinking of charity before herself, but plenty of people send in charity money everyday and Alice does not need to! She needs to take care of herself… and maybe start a family with Zed???

But isn’t there a charity for homelessness that you can choose from? And if there was, shouldn’t her family get a portion of that money? Or is it just a fake charity that some company made to make an extra buck?

Thank you for this story. Unfortunately, Alice seems to become happy. It is unfortunate, because it can only mean two things: either they’ll get a happy ending, and then we will have no more Alice and Kev; or something bad will happen to Alice and/or Kev…

1. I don’t think so. I had a guy named “Cycl0ne Sw0rd” show up in my town who looks a lot like Zededias.
2. The author isn’t taking any easy cash routes.
3. a. testingcheatsenabled true
b. familyfunds (family name) 0

(I’m not sure if the familyfunds cheat will work for ‘Bin Diver’ since it is two words)

yeah cyclone is there from the open of a neighborhood, hes not random. I would love to know where Z came from myself. There is the chance he is the child of NPC parents or moved in from out of town (if you read the sim newspaper you can keep up to date with people who move in and out of town and both births and deaths of people in the neighborhood, and weddings and game scores, lol its actually fun to read the paper now). He seems like such an awesome guy though…wish i had more of those in town…I think the majority of mine are insane anymore.

Well, that’s a much better answer than mine. But fyi, you can also click shift+prnt scrn, and then V in a graphics program to get your entire screen as an image. You can only get one image at a time that way though, as far as I can tell, and of course it sounds like it’s much more time-consuming than just pressing c.

Aggh! I love Alice — but every time she donates her money to charity I die a little inside. What a selfless thing to do, it makes me happy, but–man! What I’d give to see her keep some money for herself.

Actually, I’m going to applaud Alice’s giving. After all, there are people out there who do have it worse than she does. She at least has a friend who is willing to feed her and provide a bed on occasion.

The truth is, Alice is an AI character. She doesn’t realize she’s homeless – she knows she’s got little money and decides to donate to charity anyhow, but it’s not like it can be selfish anyway. It just follows routines.

I had a good sim that always wanted to donate to charity, it sucked because it was an easy wish to grant for he but it also meant she wouldn’t be able to save up for a larger house. She had the be surrounded by family lifetime wish and was in a 2 bedroom house (actually it was the same as what Z lives in now) and it wasn’t nearly big enough for 5 kids. She still refused to save any money though.

Okay, this has been bothering me. How exactly do you “break” a sink? Honestly, if you put me in front of one and told me to break it, I would have no idea how.

I think the reason Alice gives away all her money might be because being broke and homeless is all she knows, and she’s scared of the responsibilities that come with having money. It’s not like she could ever save up enough for a house as a grocer, but she’d feel less guilty begging from others if she didn’t have any money at all. Maybe not, but I think it’s a possibility.

Hi,my husband can break a sink in under five minutes,lol!
He’s broken three and I have to buy ones that have handles because they last longer. He’s broken showers,door knobs,locks,toliets(twice, when he fell out of the shower)..Etc…=)

The author just wants to keep her poor so she has alice donate her money- a sign that the story will be prolonged- the longer she is poor the longer she is actually homeless and interesting. I still think its stupid to donate ALL of her money though. sheesh.

she’s an adult now, she should walk into the store and say Make me full time or I’m going elsewhere, and then get a career going. Though it is in the rules of the game that they would deny any opportunities at promotion, I don’t think full time work would stand under that umbrella.

Anyone else notice that she looked pissed in that last shot? Maybe she will change her mind about donating every check to charity… I think she will eventually decide that she wants to actually buy something for herself – then again, maybe she’ll just buy something for Zed.

I wish that Alice would invest some of the money in herself, with the expectation that such an outlay would result in the eventual ability to be able to make much larger future contributions to charity.

I just love this story. I have played Sims2 voraciously in the past, and still play on occasion. I have Sims3 but have yet to install it… this blog makes me wonder what I’m waiting for!

I have to disagree with the people who are upset at the fact that alice is donating to a charity there is always someone who is in a worst position than you are you may say what can be worst than being homeless? well people that are sick and have cancer or other death threatening illnesses those with no food at all to eat I think alice feels she has food in her stomach and she found shelter and she is alive and not sick she found someone who is willing to take care of her give her shelter,food and a place to sleep and she feels there are people out there in a much worst position than she is. and regardless this only being a game it is a very realistic game and that is why i like it because weather alice is a sim or not there are people just like alice who do the same thing =) and I respect people like alice

I love this series! I’ve even created my own homeless people!
Oh, and the donation thing. I really admires Alice the first tiem she did it, but the second time seemed like it was a chore rather than a choice.

Thinks are kind of looking up. I just have a sinking feeling that something in the story’s going to happen, and it’s nothing we’d be happy about. Well, either way, I just really want to know what’ll happen in this story. I don’t care if there’s a happy ending or not, but that would be really nice for Alice.

I think she’s just downright insane…she probably gets it from Kev, whom by the way, i’m expecting to seriously die in the next post or 2. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I like hearing a nice story about how Alice managed to find even a LITTLE happiness in her world…but i mean, Kev marched strait out to Sim Henge, yelled at it. (or himself) passed out in a field, only to wake up the next day, walk all day, and pass out from hunger.
I bet you ANYTHING if he hadn’t shacked up with that old hag he was drooling over, he would still be relatively young. At least younger then he is now, and he just MIGHT have been able to survive a pilgrimage out to the henge like that. The only thing that could save him NOW, is coming across a house ANYWHERE…cause knowing Kev, he’ll just walk right in and make himself a snack, Use the toilet, and punch out the family goldfish….

PS; And the pic number 2 and 3, for just a split second, gave me the impression that they were seconds from making out and possibly on the verge of creating a grandchild for her [(soon-to-be)(dead] beat} father 😛
Kev is psychotic…
I think what really does it for me (and him too apparently), is that he THOROUGHLY enjoys talking trash about, and making fun of her to OTHER RANDOM STRANGERS THAT JUST HAPPEN TO BE WALKING BY while she sleeps on a bench…
I mean, what could be POSSIBLY be saying??!?! “Hey, see that UGLY LOOOOSER OVER THERE??!?? THAT’S MY STUPID, WORTHLESS, DUMB DAUGHTER!!! WANNA BUY HER??! SERIOUSLY, I’LL TRADE HER FOR A HUG! NOW HUG ME RANDOM STRANGER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Awwwww!Go Alice.When she was giving away her money in the second to last shot it looked she was kind of sad to give her money away.In the last shot it looks like she was actually happy to do it.Wow!Alice is a better person than I am&she isn’t even real.Fontgoddess does make a very good point about the money being shared in the household about if Alice doesn’t spend her paycheck the way she wants than Kev will have the availability to spend her paycheck however he chooses.Alice and Z really need to take their relationship to the next level already.They look wayyyyyyyy too cute together to not be a couple.They would have some really pretty kids.Alice actually looks happpy.This is the first time we have see her PJs they are also cute.I wonder if Kev has died yet.I’m waiting for it to happen.Great post as always(:

I used to work as a (don’t hit me, please!) door-to-soor charity canvasser when I was a student. The little old ladies living in tiny houses with 15 cats and no central heating ALWAYS gave. I used to try to avoid asking them and just “chat about the charity” and they were always friendly, always had time to listen and INSISTED on giving. The working class mums with kids always gave. The poor students living off of beans always gave.

The people in big houses with shiny silver cars used to set their dogs on me. Literally.

Alice is a good person, and she is poor. When you have next to nothing, and have been even worse off, £5 seems like a fortune and suddenly having a whole wage packet can be daunting – you feel rich! It feels easy to give when you have so little, even if it doesn’t make sense.

Agreed! People who are poor or have once been poor can appreciate how difficult life can be and how even a little bit of money can mean so much. Those who have never known a life in which money was not plentiful can’t empathize with their situation, and tend to think that the poor are lazy good-for-nothings.

I love this story. I wonder how kev is.
I think it is interesting how she keeps choosing to donate. I love how much this game has expanded to let personalities choose to perform actions like these at their free will. Its AWESOME!!!!!!!!

did Alice move in with Zedadias or is she just staying there and awwwwwwwwww Alice is such a good person we could all learn alot from her even if shes not real the mere fact that she gives even when she has so little is very touching

What’s strange is that as soon as I started to read this chapter the song “Let’s Talk About Love” by Mindy McCready started to play. It was so strange because it almost sounded like she was singing about Alice for a moment there.
“There’s a little girl across the railroad tracks
From the poor side of town
The only clothes that she has ever known
Are some worn out jeans her brother handed down
But everyday on the way to school
She sees the homeless in the street
She takes a quarter that she saved for milk
And lays it on the sidewalk at their feet

Talk about love, true love
You wanna talk about reaching out, when the whole world’s given up
We hold the power to change a life with just one touch.”

You should check it out when you get the chance, because it was just so perfect that this song played at that exact moment. Especially when many people were so against Alice’s actions of giving her money to a charity. There’s someone out there who has it worse than her, and if she gives money… then maybe one person will live a better life because of a few lost simoleons (in this case). What if someone in a similar situation to Alice’s had donated money that could’ve reached Alice when she was a child? She might’ve been able to afford food for a few days, or some toys that could’ve acted as a retreat from her father. Because of her past experiences she knows what it’s like, and she wouldn’t wish that on anyone else for all of the simoleons in her pocket.

my sim characters aren’t as interesting, they do the norm, except my green-thumb genius sim, i had her quit her political career but now she wants to be a criminal mastermind.. how weird, didn’t peg her to be that way..

hmm.. alice, what is her lifetime wish? I don’t recall what it is now, since she is a young adult.

Great verbiage on the characters with little interjection from you… if I let my sims run like you did, i think they would starve to death reading because of their traits.. they just can’t seem to stop reading..

Just out of curiosity, roBurky is referred to as “HIM” but I haven’t seen anything that would indicate male/female. The name Robin is unisex. I initially thought that roBurky was a female, but I guess the gamer thing has everyone thinking roBurky is male. I did see one article that doesn’t make ANY reference to him/her so I don’t think everyone is convinced one way or the other. Has anyone actually met roBurky? I’m not trying to offend roBurky, and maybe the secret is intentional. But I keep reading “him” and I’m wondering why that’s assumed. I would think that a female gamer with this sort of talent would be massively cool, although if you are a guy roBurky I still think you’re cool 🙂

I never really gave the sex of the author a thought. I generally don’t.

Sadly, game design is a male dominated field, though that is changing some, I think, but The Sims series has always been a game with a near even male/female ratio of players (in fact, it may actually have more female players, a rarity in the gaming world).

As for your comment, this series is basically the storyboard of a silent film with a narrative. It’s the writing, not the pictures that turn it into a good story. And women have been writing good, and at many times great fiction for hundreds of years now, just as much as men.

If I had to guess, Robin is male, but that’s a wild a** guess, and I wouldn’t be totally shocked to be wrong.

Am I the only one who can see the fear in Alice’s eyes in the fourth picture? RUN, CHILD! WON’T SOME STOCKING-CAPPED, GRAY-BEARDED, ELDERLY HOMELESS MAN SAVE THIS POOR WOMAN FROM HER RELENTLESS PURSUER???

Heh. Given the framing in the second pic, am I the only one who thought that the followup to Alice suggesting Z make breakfast would likely be her having this odd desire for sausage? 😉

And on the subject of Alice and the charities… I think the main problem here isn’t that she’s giving money to charity, it’s that she’s giving *all* of her money to charity. Isn’t there any way to fulfill both the responsibility to yourself (paying bills, maintaining yourself (ie, food, clothing, etc), and dealing with other financial responsibilities–like repair costs for things you keep breaking. 😉 ) *and* donate as well? Or is it a set minumum amount to donate or something? Donating *some* to charity is, as many have pointed out, a good thing. But repeatedly donating it all…suggests either a bit of insanity on the donator’s part, or that the charity is a PTL-type scam that guilt-trips people into self-destructive behavior.

Nice job, Robin. I’m sure your goal with the donation was to illicit reactions and responses from your readers, and you did that in spades! People are getting pretty worked about about her choices. That’s a good sign that you’re writing an effective character.

And for the people asking question about donations, I don’t think the Sims will ever donate on their own. They only get a wish to donate that you can grant, so it has to be player-initiated. And you can donated various amounts between $100 and $10000. Odds are that there was a little bit of literary liberty in saying that she donated exactly all of her money to charity.

For the record, I rather like it that Alice has more boundaries than a cat in heat. And peeping into the intimate lives of others through the media is so overdone I’d find it creative and refreshing if Alice pursued hers discretely.

This is soo totally awesome. I’d have to wait a few months though to try and get the game. I’ve got to much in my RL planned for this month to spend a lot of money right now. Going to visit the folks in a week.

I think Alice is a true optimist, and a really good sim(?). She knows that there are charismaless sims, llamas, trees, illiterate sims whatever charity that she is donating too filled with people who don’t have benches or people like Z to be kind to her. She has a job, a play to stay, family (no matter how twisted), and now friends. It’s nice to see Kev’s negative views about life haven’t rubbed off on her.

In response to all the people applauding Alice for donating all of her money to charity because “there’s always someone out there worse off than she is”, let me propose this idea.

She has no money for food, no shelter, no bed, and the job she has doesn’t supply her with meals.

She donates money to charity under the above conditions.

Now she has to mooch off her neighbors, friends, and acquaintances to simply survive. She breaks just about everything that she touches, even if by accident, causing these sims to have to expend money and/or time to fix said items, all the while supplying her with food and board occasionally.

Under the circumstances, by donating her minimum wage paycheck, she has made a minuscule improvement on a small group of people’s lives, whereas she has caused both herself, and everyone around her quite a lot of hardship and trouble that could have been avoided.

In real life, I would agree completely. And I would also think that they were a little bit insane… For the game, however, it makes sense. If she donates, she gets the ‘charitable’ moodlet. With that, she has a better mood, and gets closer to a raise in her job and has greater long-term advantages. This way, it is more likely that she could end up with her own food to eat, bed to sleep in, and her own stuff to break. But like I said, in real life, I would have to agree with you.

I wait for each chapter of this story, and it appears to be happening so naturally that these pixels have become very real and I care about what happens to them. I’d beg for a happy ending if I thought it would make a difference, but I suspect that even you haven’t a clue what life holds in store for Alice and Kev.

*waiting for the update of today* … By the way, sims are unbelieveable survivors, so if you’re going to let Kev wander around until he dies, it might become a looong journey! Well, he was is a quite poor condition already when he left, so I’m not sure, but if you lock in sims in normal condition, it takes days before they die! Even if their hunger would be so low as possible, they still survive a good while… O_O

I check daily, too, but jeez, RoBurky is entitled to a life. I’m pretty sure that he never intended this project to become an obligation. When we gripe about a lag in posting, I imagine that’s just what it feels like, and that can’t be much fun.

I have to say I love this blog, first time poster, long-time reader. Everyday I look forward to reading more about alice and kev, and everyday you leave me wanting even more. I’ve tried waiting like some people do, waiting for at least a few posts to pile up, but as soon as I open my browser everyday I gravitate towards your blog. This rocks!

Omg!! I cannot wait till the next one dude! Hope it tells us what the frick happens to Kev. I mean isn’t the last thing he did is pass out on a big farm in like really early morning.Cannot wait people!! WooHoo!! Hope he’s okay, i mean he’s rude and mean to his daughter but i dont wish death for him, but i wanna see what happens!

I agree with the very first comment I read! Something about ‘feeling pride’ for her, even though she’s a video game character! I just love Alice! And she’s so pretty, too. She’s a wonderful person (or character) x]